Happy New Year!
Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. 2010 ended with a BIG project helping a major small business software company rethink their online strategy.
One aspect of the discovery phase was to review their site metrics to better understand current site usage patterns. This wasn’t a months-long project so I asked to see their current quarterly or annual benchmark reports only to discover that they don’t do standard reporting of traffic, engagement patterns, content viewed, etc.
I thought that this just was the exception that proved ‘everyone does benchmark reporting’ until I had a couple of beers with an old friend who’s run digital agencies and now works for a very large digital media company. When I mentioned that I did ‘annual benchmark studies’ for a variety of clients, he was interested in what I considered standard.
So… here we go!
Why complete an annual web metrics benchmark study?
If you’ve just been told to do one, or your organization does one by rote, feel free to skip ahead. If you’re wanting or needing some great reasons to complete an annual benchmark study, read on.
From my experience, benchmark studies are completed to:
- Monitor site successes with an eye toward improving various metrics
- Identify aspects of the site that could be improved, and prioritize those improvements
- Determine how information and functionality on the site is used, and the affects of usage
What does an annual web metrics benchmark study include?
A full benchmark study includes a detailed analysis of five primary aspects of the site:
- Visits . These data elements provide top line information about initial user interaction with your site, and include:
o Daily visits – to see changes through the year and identify causes for spikes and valleys
o Page views, by day – will also show trends and spikes
- Visitors. Information about visitors shows whether we have a loyal, regular audience, or if users come periodically based on their immediate needs.
o Visitors, by day – shows peaks and valleys, may differ significantly from ‘visits’ on sites where some users may come more than once a day
o Visitor loyalty – frequency distribution to show return patterns
o Geographical distribution – most interesting for international sites, but may have relevance for US sites as well
- Sources of Traffic. A key aspect of the analysis is what seems to drive users to come… are they seeking information on a search engine? Referred from other sites? Or do they know us and type in our URL or link from an email we sent?
- Site Usage. After learning about who uses the site and why they appear to be coming, it’s important to study what they do while on the site.
o Pages viewed per visit – allows you to judge whether users are engaging with site
o Time spent on site -- also shows engagement levels
o Content areas accessed – as a summary measurement, you should determine the percentage of pages viewed for your primary content areas
o Primary pages – the top 10 or 20 pages should be analyzed in some detail to understand navigation patterns, usage patterns, bounces and exits
- Goals achieved. For an ecommerce site, goals are fairly straight-forward… sales. Examining the achievement of goals across the sales funnel provides the greatest detail, as does a study of the achievement patterns across the year. Other sites should have goals identified such as leads generated, videos viewed in full, clicks to ‘contact us’, etc.
What should we do after the benchmark?
After studying the results in depth and drawing initial conclusions, more detailed analyses of various aspects will probably be needed.
